This week, J.K. Rowling released The Ink Black Heart, a new crime thriller. Despite the obvious similarities between her experiences and the book’s plot—about an author who receives criticism for using a touchy subject—the Harry Potter author insists they are purely coincidences.
The sixth book in her Cormoran Strike series, which was released under the pen name Robert Galbraith, follows Edie Ledwell, a co-creator of the well-known cartoon The Ink Black Heart. Edie is “being tormented by a mystery internet persona who goes by the nickname of Anomie,” according to the official summary for the novel. After the animation was condemned for being racist, ableist, and transphobic for a scene involving a hermaphrodite worm, Edie “sees online trolls and her fanbase turn on her,” according to Rolling Stone. When Edie is discovered tasered and dead in a cemetery, cops rethink their original denial of looking into the case.
Rowling said that similarities between the story’s premise and her own life are nothing more than coincidences in a recent podcast interview with renowned British broadcaster Graham Norton. Rowling has been in the spotlight for more than two years due to remarks she made on social media and in an article regarding a variety of transgender-related issues, including bathroom usage and conversion treatment.
Rowling responds that there are “more echoes” than she realized when Norton says that while reading the book, he couldn’t help but think of how it “echoes your life” She was eager to counter that the book did not describe modern internet personal experiences. She said, “I’d written the book before some ideas occurred to me online. I worried that everyone would interpret this as a reaction to what had occurred to me, but it wasn’t, I confessed to my spouse.
She went on to say that the book’s first draft was finished by the time she encountered internet backlash. Who do you believe is the most poisonous fandom? I asked my two adolescents when I conceived this narrative concept, which was around three years ago. To my surprise, they brought up a particular cartoon that I had watched and thought was hilarious.
Then I went online and looked and thought, they’re correct. Rowling declined to name the cartoon but did admit she was astonished by their statement. That is why the character in the novel is an animator. Originally, I had considered making it a comic script writer, but instead, I decided to make it an animator as a tribute to this in the particular poisonous fanbase.
